Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Grant: Early Botany and Indigenous Plant-Related Knowledge

这项博士论文改进拨款支持植物学历史上的一个项目。具体地说，它将研究殖民时期早期的洲际植物转移。它的目的是利用科学史上的这一关键时期，引起人们对拉美裔世界的土著人民如何对现代植物学做出关键贡献的关注，并探索早期社会如何应对自己的信息时代新信息的迅速涌入。许多植物为全球观众所熟悉，包括墨西哥的万寿菊、中国的柑橘、南非的百合等等。这些植物中的大多数是在殖民帝国崛起后才为全球观众所熟悉的，当时定期的跨洋航行使植物、动物、人类和信息在世界各地的转移比以往任何时候都更快、更容易。这个项目的结果将说明随着时间的推移，人们对自然世界的许多理解方式，认识到不同地方继续共存的多种世界观。通过提供以现代植物园为基础的公共宣传，该项目将帮助公众和学生将这一历史时期与他们今天生活的物质和智力世界联系起来。在追踪植物在早期现代西班牙帝国的运动和与植物相关的知识方面，这个项目汇集了考古、人类学和历史信息，以更好地了解植物是如何在大西洋周围移动的。通过将印刷的植物学文本与关于植物生长地点的考古和文献证据进行比较，这个项目为调查官方圈子以外的人是如何看待植物提供了新的工具。这种基于太空的方法有可能在扩展科学史方面有更广泛的应用，包括更多没有创作西方传统书面作品的群体。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This doctoral dissertation improvement grant supports a project in the history of botany. Specifically, it will examine intercontinental plant transfer during the early colonial period. It aims to use this critical period in the history of science to bring attention to how Indigenous people in the Hispanic world made key contributions to modern botany, as well as exploring how earlier societies dealt with the rapid influx of new information in an Information Age of their own. Many plants are familiar to global audiences, including marigolds from Mexico, citruses from China, lilies from South Africa, and many more. Most of these plants became familiar to global audiences only after the rise of the colonial empires, when regular cross-oceanic voyages made the transfer of plants, animals, people, and information around the world faster and easier than ever before. The results of this project will illustrate the many ways in which people have understood the natural world over time, recognizing the continued co-existence of multiple worldviews in different places. By providing public outreach based in the modern botanical garden, this project will help the public and students connect this period in history to the physical and intellectual world they live in today. In tracing the movement of plants and plant-related knowledge in the early modern Spanish empire, this project brings together archaeological, anthropological, and historical information to better understand how plants moved around the Atlantic. By comparing printed botanical texts with archaeological and documentary evidence about where plants were grown, this project provides new tools for investigating how people thought about plants outside official circles. This space-based method has potential for broader application in extending the history of science to include more groups who did not produce written works in the Western tradition.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.